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16 comments on “Yes, we\’re English: “You need more qualifications to look after a kennel than a nursery.””

Qualification inflation ruined the Nursing profession. All this red tape does is force folks who like children but are not the brightest bunnies in the cabbage patch out of a job they can do. I would imagine that very few 4-y-o need a carer versed in string theory to aid their development.

So why do nursery care workers need maths skills. I got the impression from the use of the word “nursery” that the children will be very young and can probably do basic addition and subtraction. They haven’t reached school yet where they will be taught basic maths skills.

And English? The children won’t be doing subjunctives or anything more serious than nursery rhymes.

Maybe the care workers need maths skills to count the children in the room to make sure none have escaped?

Your intent is puzzling: you appear to be suggesting that, since its bad that we look after animals better than children (you do think thats bad, I presume), it must be bad that you don’t need quals to look after children. But then your text appears to say that its bad to need quals to look after children.

So, other than the usual ranting against “morons”, what are you trying to say?

If you were trying to say “abolish OFSTED” I’d be all in favour.

Tim adds: “since its bad that we look after animals better than children (you do think thats bad, I presume)”

No, I didn’t say that I thought that this was bad. Nor do I think it is. What I did say is that this is English. Famously so.

Ah! The Dr Connolley with the ‘e’. Not famed with his skills with data.
The clue’s in the “Get over it” imperative, aimed at the author of the article. Slight piss take. Like CAGW but obviously a lot smaller & funnier.

How utterly pointless. A far better rule about qualifications would be that no politician is permitted to talk about science until they have an advanced scientific qualification with documentary evidence that they have studied and understood logical fallacies.

We can assume, can’t we, that the people who are currently not deemed to to have strong enough basic skills to look after 4-year-olds have been through, at least, 11 years of primary and secondary education?

If they haven’t ‘got it’ after that, will they ever?

And if they do suddenly start to get it, what does that say about the school system?

If Maths etc is what they want improved do something about the shitty state schools not pester little kids. If a person can’t play and enjoy themselves without care when they are little, when can they?.

“And which fucking idiot has decided that the way to reduce childcare costs is to increase the necessary qualifications to do childcare?”

Well, isn’t it possible that a better educated (or, more likely, more intelligent) carer will be able to care for more children than a moron can be trusted with? That would be a productivity increase and to be praised, surely?

Dave: Comparative advantage is the reason – The Non obvious and non trivial thing Tim so loves. We’d rather the better educated were doing something more productive they needed their education for. Better for everyone.

A few months ago I was being attended to by an NHS nurse. She was puzzled that she had to give me 3.75 mg of magic medicine. She got some paper and started scribbling, so I put her out of her misery by pointing out that a 2.5 mg plus a 1.25 mg would do the trick. So she wrote that down and added them up.